Covering the Industry’s News
P.O. Box 791290 San Antonio, Texas 78279-1290
Texas Style
PRSRT. STD. U.S. POSTAGE PAID DALLAS, TX PERMIT #1451
Change Service Requested
San Antonio H Austin Dallas/Fort Worth H Houston
San Antonio
CONSTRUCTION
™
The Industry’s Newspaper Gruene Hall New Braunfels, TX
www.constructionnews.net
H
(210) 308-5800
H
Volume 19
H
Number 6
H
JUNE 2017
Keeping up in the races
With ‘a servant’s heart’
Cy Jary, owner of Con-Cor Incorporated, and his wife, Susan, enjoy watching the races up in Austin and have even sponsored a car recently.
Terracon’s San Antonio team is celebrating 25 years as part of the local construction industry and local community in the Alamo City.
A
s president Cy Jary reflects upon reaching the 30th anniversary of his company, Con-Cor Incorporated, he observes that the milestone holds a lot of heartache and a lot of reward. Having learned from the school of hard knocks, Jary notes that the company started out in February 1987 as an interior finish out business and then grew to doing public sector work, mostly remodeling, for the federal, state, county and city market. From early on, Con-Cor had to adapt to the changing market. When the savings and loan crisis hit in the late ‘80s, Jary transitioned away from interior finish out to general contracting. “We have done some fairly substan-
T
aking on the largest project that Superior Contracting Services (SCS) has completed to date for Goodwill Industries of San Antonio, SCS recently delivered the fully renovated Goodwill Operations Office, Warehouse & Clearance Center located at 4810 Eisenhauer Rd. Trey Wiederstein, the owner of SCS, has been working with Goodwill on their projects, including their retail stores and Donation Stations, since 2009. He notes that this is the first time Goodwill, a nonprofit social-enterprise, has made a move in distribution facilities in about 15 years, and this move doubled the amount of local distribution and sorting squarefootage they have available. The 198,000-sf project broke ground in late August 2016 and was completed ahead of schedule at the beginning of January this year. With 12,000sf of office, 22,000sf for the Clearance Center, 14,000sf for e-commerce and electronics
tial projects,” he recalls. “I think the biggest new construction was about $5.5 million, and then the biggest remodeling was about $8.2 million for Randolph Air Force Base.” In the last four or five years, Jary cites a decline in public sector spending as one of the latest challenges after surviving the Great Recession, but he explains that the company has aimed to stay as lean as possible, keeping busy with Job Order Contract (JOC), the Air Force’s Simplified Acquisition for Base Engineering Requirements (SABER), and Multi-Award Construction Contract (MACC) work. Though he was born in New Mexico while his father did work there, Jary grew continued on Page 25
H
aving grown to nearly 100 people, the San Antonio office is roughly the fifth largest office Terracon has out of its 140 locations across the U.S., and this year marks the firm’s 25th anniversary in the Alamo City. Celebrating all year, the office decided that this quarter-century milestone was the perfect time to produce its first-ever Fiesta medals in honor of its 25 years here in San Antonio, the home of Fiesta. Including the milestone in their email signatures is helping to spread the word, and they will work the 25th anniversary into the theme of their annual client appreciation party in October. Chuck Gregory came into the San Antonio office in 1995, three years after it
was established. Today, he carries several titles, including regional manager for South Texas, including San Antonio, Laredo, and Pharr, and San Antonio office manager. He is also a senior principal and vice president. In his tenure, Gregory has seen the office – and the city – grow and evolve. He has seen the emphasis on safety increase after the firm embarked upon its incident/injury-free journey six years ago. He has seen the branch bounce back from the Great Recession, going from a leaner staff of 63 people to almost 100 now. He has also seen people rise from entry-level positions to project managers to department managers and even leaving San Antonio to manage a continued on Page 25
Where there’s a Goodwill
Superior Contracting Services recently completed the new Goodwill San Antonio Warehouse & Clearance Center on Eisenhauer Road.
recycling, and 150,000sf for warehouse, sorting and distribution, the multifaceted use of the space made the project unique while posing challenges to meet the specialized needs of the different work areas. Wiederstein explains, “There are actually four different occupancies in the building, subdividing the areas into the office; the ecommerce spaces and electronics processing areas where they handle recycling of electronic components including batteries and a lot of sensitive materials; the warehouse space; and a Good Careers Academy where they offer a commercial driver training program. “With that many different users in the building and a Clearance Center open to the general public, each area has its own security and access control to ensure people aren’t just making their way throughout the building who shouldn’t continued on Page 25